Contents

Overview

Vertigo is based on a skyscraper that was under construction and centered the conflict between the Counter-Terrorist and the Terrorist teams. The main objective for the Terrorists were to bomb the building while the CTs must prevent them from achieving their goal.

Official description

Terrorists are trying to bomb Rizzleton tower before it reaches completion.

Development History

Vertigo reused the textures from Half-Life and the background consisted of other skyscrapers. The props mainly consisted of construction materials, such as concrete. Vertigo's background image reused Assault's background image.

The map was greatly revamped from the textures to the overall structure of the map, thus greatly enhancing realism. The background featured more realistic buildings and city streets from below, indicating that the unnamed building where the map takes place in is probably located somewhere in New York City.

The roofs of the bombsites were mostly removed and new props were added throughout the map. The height of the walls were reduced, allowing some players to jump on top of some props to eliminate stationary or incoming players. Finally, the middle hallways and the pathways that connected between the bombsites and the stairwell and ramp were changed to a great extent.

Notably, the ramp has two ladders and there is a penetrable wooden wall that blocks visual contact between the ramp and the entrances to bombsite A.

If the C4 was dropped outside of the building or into the elevator shafts, map triggers will return the dropped C4 back to the playable area.

Trivia

Vertigo means "height sickness" or dizziness caused by looking down from a great height as the conflict is centered around an incomplete skyscraper.

In Global Offensive, some .NAV file areas are named "50th floor" and "51st floor", hinting that the skyscraper has 51 stories.

The corpses of players will simply "stop" after falling through 3-4 floors in Counter-Strike 1.6 due to a map border limit. In Global Offensive however, floor 1 is fully constructed so ragdolls will properly drop on floor 1, although players will still die in mid-air rather than dying from having impact with the ground.

The background area at the ground level/street is simply made with textures. Therefore, exploring the area (with noclip) is very limited, as reaching towards the cars/street will result in the background disappearing into black.

Also in 1.6, there is a secret enclosed room right beneath bombsite B that contains the developer names. The only way to access it is to use noclip or free look spectate mode.

In Counter-Strike 1.6, some of the "unprotected" edges are barricaded with invisible walls like the two walls at the CT spawn zone, but any weapons and the C4 entity will bypass the invisible barricade.

Bots can occasionally fall off, especially those who are being engaged by enemies while strafing. However, this only applies for higher difficulty bots as normal and easy bots will not strafe unless they see a sniper.

If the bomb is dropped from the building, Terrorist bots will all commit suicide to reach the bomb, similar to Prodigy from older games.

In CS 1.6, bots from both teams may jump off the building by accident though this is quite rare. The problem is presumably navigation issues.

If a player falls off the map, the console will read "{Victim} killed self (with headshot) from trigger_hurt"

Upon falling, a scream and splat sounds will be heard. These sounds have been removed in Global Offensive.

Near the TerroristSpawn Zone, there is a ladder leading from the first playable floor to the second playable floor that appears to be inaccessible from the bottom. In Global Offensive, a teammate can boost you up by crouching below the ladder. Prior to Global Offensive, the ladder can still be accessed from the bottom without teammates by carefully jumping from nearby ladders laying on the floor.

Another (infamous) fact is a CT can jump from the top spawn zone to descend below and quickly kill Terrorists at the beginning of a round. This is often achieved with a Negev.